Summer 2000 - The Monster Issue
Greetings From the Final Year of the 20th Century.
Welcome aboard our little newsletter to fellow Texans, Joseph Shovlin in
Austin and one of our favorite artists, Sherry Watson, in San Antonio
(HI Sherlock!!!). Further afield, we are pleased to welcome Mike
Hinchman from Barboursville, West Virginia, Heath from Iowa, MaryAnn
from Michigan, and from even further north, Marc Chase from Brandon
in Manitoba, Canada. Finally, greetings across the big puddle to
David Crook in England.
Apologies to one and all for skipping a month. It was necessary so that
Clif could grind out the last published paper his committee required.
It may be necessary again to skip another one to try to get the
dissertation finished by the end of summer. The elusive Ph.D. will
arrive at the end of summer, if we are lucky, and the end of December,
if not. Then Doc Clif will need a new set of employment (along the
lines of those old "Doc Savage needs a new set of shirts" ads).
Anyway, that leaves us with a lot of news to squeeze in. Lots can
happen in a couple of months. There is water on Mars (probably), more
and more SF on the Web, and things accelerate constantly. Fortunately,
electrons don't take up a lot of space.
And now...
Fasten your seatbelt and bring your browser window to
an upright and locked position.
And we are off ....
As always, how far off you have to determine for yourself.
Deaths and Other Fannish Disasters.
In mid-April the unique talent, Edward Gorey, died at the age of 75,
apparently from a heart attack. Although many people believed Gorey
was English, due to the Victorian England setting of much of his art,
he was actually an American who was born in Chicago and lived much
of his life in the Northeast.
Just before his death the Horror Writers Association honored Gorey
(and Charlie Grant) with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
British fan Dave Langford wrote an obituary for a local (to him)
newspaper at
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,212105,00.html
.
Edward Gorey - http://www.goreyography.com/
Dave Langford - http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/
Catherine Crook de Camp, one time CONTEX guest here in Houston, but more
notably long term collaborator and writing partner of husband L. Sprague
de Camp died in early April.
Biography - http://www.lspraguedecamp.com/catherine.html .
Harry Harrison went to the hospital in March for an angiogram and was
kept until mid-April, when they did a quadruple bypass. He continues
to get better and still plans to make the Chicago Worldcon.
Biography
http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/sf-texts/authors/H/Harrison,Harry.mbox
Bob Tucker had to give up Con Going at the age of 85. He says that
there are some things that Beam's Choice just can't cure. His first
con was October 1939 and his last one was October 1999.
Biography - http://www.inil.com/users/lori/wtucker.htm
Northwest SMOF, SF reviewer and fan artist Joe Mayhew died in early
June. Details at http://www.sfwa.org/News/mayhew.htm . He died of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (the hospital's best guess), a relative
of Mad Cow Disease that is considered extremely rare in the U.S.
Mayhew won the 1998 Hugo Award for best fan artist and was also
nominated for work published in 1990, 1996 and 1999; his cartoons
appeared in Asimov's, Analog, Pirate Writings and a number of fanzines.
Starbase Houston's communications were disrupted for a period of several
weeks due to DSL problems. But it's all better now.
Friends of Fandom Board-Member and officer (or past officer) of half the
SF organizations around these parts, Candice Pulleine, was in her 7
day-old new car when a randomly generated Houston driver smashed her
new car. That's the kind of situation where you hope the insurance
company writes the car off altogether, but they didn't. :-(
Candace went to the emergency room where they poked, prodded, and
x-rayed. Fortunately she is OK except for hurting when she gets up,
sets down, moves funny, or climbs in or out of the rented car. Her
own car will be a couple of weeks more being repaired.
Friends of Fandom President, Bill Parker had a holiday in the cool
crisp clean air of Orlando. Well, actually not so clean. They were
having wildfires again so the air was filled with smoke. His initial
problem with sinuses became a sinus infection. And then, of course, the
vacation was over and he had to, er, return to the air of Houston.
Enough said.
Quotable Quotes
There is about yoomins a quality so profoundly strange that it renders
questions of intelligence or stupidity simply irrelevant. I have spent
some time in that sector of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud--not by choice,
of course; a breakdown--and ask you to believe that this is true,
however improbable it may seem:
Yoomins believe at their core that life is not tough enough.
- Spider Robinson - http://www.galaxyonline.com/standard.html
Can you say sarcasm?
Great Bios of the Recent Past.
SciFi.com actually has a fairly good bio up for Howard Waldrop at
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/waldrop/waldrop_bio.html
the first decent one we recall seeing on the Net.
The occasion is that Ellen Datlow's Web-zine for SCIFI.com, Sci Fiction,
has republished Howard's award winning, "The Ugly Chickens". Check it
out at
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/waldrop/ . You
are in for a treat if you have never read it.
Sci Fiction is publishing both "Classics" and "Originals", read reprints
and, er, originals. Currently they are featuring stories by Severna
Park and Robert Silverberg. But their archive features stories by
Robert Heinlein, Pat Cadigan and Chris Fowler, and others. Their
forthcoming issues in June, according to Locus, will include on June 21
''Dune: Nighttime Shadows on Open Sand'' by Brian Herbert & Kevin J.
Anderson and on June 28 ''The Ship Who Sang'' by Anne McCaffrey
(classic) and a NEW story from Howard, ''Winter Quarters''!!!
Sci Fiction - http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/
Severna Park - http://users.erols.com/feldsipe/Index.htm
Robert Silverberg (Quasi-Official Site)
http://www.connectexpress.com/~jon/silvhome.htm
Silverberg on SETI
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Silverberg_Robert/neque_illorum.htm
Ellen Datlow - http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/editor.html
Locus - http://www.locusmag.com/
Sci Fiction is pretty Flash heavy, but if you can't handle Flash it
routes around it fairly well unless your browser is just so old that
it kills it trying. As a matter of fact, SciFi.com has a new Flash
heavy look throughout. The new look is part of a massive site
redesign.
You can read about it at
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2000-06/21/11.00.sfc .
(Note from Margaret. I now have Netscape 4.7 and for the FIRST time seem
to be able to handle Flash with ease. I'm still not sure about
Shockwave, however. Clif, on the other hand, has my old hand-me-down
1995 Mac running Netscape 2 and I, as I remember, it didn't do Flash.
So it is worth noting when a site can handle pre-Flash browsers!!)
All in all, they seem prepared to go head to head with Galaxy for SF
mind-space on the web. Perhaps coincidentally, Galaxy Online has also
recently had a massive site redesign.
http://www.galaxyonline.com/DouglasConwayLetter.html
Before we leave the subject of SCIFI.com behind, for those of you who
enjoy readings at conventions, their Seeing Ear Theatre has in its
archives readings by Allen Steele, William Gibson, Pat Murphy, Tad
Williams, Neal Stephenson, Geoffrey Landis, Orson Scott Card, Nancy
Kress, Samuel R. Delany, K. W. Jeter, Greg Bear, Maureen F McHugh,
Walter Jon Williams, Walter Koenig (Warped Factors), Vonda N. McIntyre,
Frederik Pohl, Michael Swanwick, Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Joe Haldeman
and lotsa others. Can you think of a better way to kill time? And of
course they also have Originals and Classics that are from the works of
another host of writers whose names you would recognize. Notably, the
forthcoming City of Dreams series created by Babylon 5's J. Michael
Straczynski. If your computer has sound capability, check it out for
yourself.
Reading Archives - http://www.scifi.com/set/readings/
Seeing Ear Theater - http://www.scifi.com/set/
It May Be SCIFI to You But It's Science Fiction to Me
SF Crownest says "Once upon time in a science fiction market long, long
ago, SF was something that was run by loving fans with nary a sniff of
big media money. (Incidentally, true fans with a capital F hate the term
scifi, for them it's either SF or science fiction, not this
media-invented word)." - The Last Light of the Old Republic.
http://207.201.173.29/sfnews/newsc0600.htm
Speaking of Sci Fi, the name, of course, is one of the four recurring
disputes in Science Fiction fandom. The other three are:
1) What exactly is or isn't Science Fiction?
(With the major sub-question, "what, if anything, is the difference
between Science Fiction and Fantasy").
(Note from Margaret. Fortunately, my library system has agreed to
disagree. Some of our branches shelve the fantasy with the general
fiction. At my branch, of course, I have been allowed to convert
the fantasy back to where Ghod meant it to be, that is, with the
science fiction. The collection code for it, after all, does say
"Science Fiction and Fantasy". But some branches have to be purists
and shelve them separately! If even librarians can't agree, Ghod help
sf fans!!)
2 What is the nature of fandom?
(Are fans slans? (or supermen)? Is fandom a way of life? Or is it
simply a meaningless hobby? Are we all mugwumps with our mugs in the
future and our wumps in the past? Should we engage in serious
constructive (SERCON) activities or faaaaaaannish ones? Does true
fandom revolve around conventions or zines or clubs or filk or ...
Should our zines use staples, glue, or electrons?
(Query from Margaret: Where does "But I only read SF [books, zines,
short stories, etc.] vs. But I only watch SF [TV shows, movies, etc.]"
fit in??? What was once described to me as the literary vs the media
fans?)
(Keep Reading - Clif)
How do we keep THEM from overrunning and destroying fandom and how
do we get the arrogant bastard elitists to accept our version of
fandom as equally valid with their own? And where is the new
generation going to come from?)
((THEM is variously Trekkies, Comic Collectors, Filthy Pros, Gamers,
SCA-ers, children, Cyberpunks, Media Fans, SMOFs from elsewhere,...
You know. THEM.))
(Note from Margaret: The next generation is currently at the gamers
conventions. So, our best hope is probably to have cons with both
strong gaming tracks as well as strong literary tracks.... You will
note that I list every gamers con that I find out about on my What's
Happening page....)
3 Who Sawed Courtney's Boat?
(Alternately, What's the best way to fry Mung Peas? Is it ethical to
use lime Jell-O in the bathtub at conventions? Do gremlins exist? Is the
answer really 42? Is there intelligent life on Earth? How many bars are
there in the Tucker Hotel? Do you know the secret handshake of fandom?
What's the correct way to run a Worldcon?
(sorry, the last one is a trick question))
Anyway...
SCI-FI.
Rhymes with Hi-Fi. Created early on by one of our own from the left
coast, 4E (Forry J.) Ackerman. Also, he who introduced costuming as
a convention activity, a much less controversial contribution. The
term was hijacked and used by media types outside the SF field. Then
it became used in fandom as a term of approbation to refer to schlock.
The two groups pointed to the same bad films and said SCI-FI, but
meant very different things thereby.
Time was that you could recognize an outsider or someone pretending to
be an SF fan by their use of the term. But then the Media marketers
did a double twist on us and started using the term to market decent
to good SF in TV, movies, and then as a category for book publishing.
A new influx of young fans used the term, and some SF fans then
considered the term a mark of immaturity.
Today, a fannish generation or two later, you can find fans who consider
the term a deadly insult and fans who consider it their preferred term
for Science Fiction. Reactions have included the variant spelling
SKIFFY, and much heat, wit, and other verbiage, as different sides
have argued.
Recently the subject came up in the Saturday Morning Ritual Breakfast
group's email discussions. The part I thought to save is at
http://www.clever.net/cam/skiffy.html .
Much more complete is the Damon Knight Genie discussion preserved by
SFWA at http://www.sfwa.org/misc/skiffy2.htm .
Both worth reading, and picking out the corresponding positions is
mildly entertaining.
And speaking of SciFi Schlock you may be interested in Mike Resnick's
ideas on why we get so much of it.
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Resnick_Mike/stoopid_is.htm
Awards Awards Awards
Saturn Awards
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/email.cgi?story=2000-06/06/23.00.film
Tim Allen won best actor (for Galaxy Quest). Very deservedly!!
Gordon R. Dickson & Poul Anderson were the year 2000 inductees into
the SF Hall of Fame - http://www.kcsciencefiction.org/00pr.htm .
The HOMer Awards are a popularity contest among CompuServe SF readers
(that is, CompuServe users of the HOM-9 Forum). The Ballot at
http://www.sfsite.com/04b/hom79.htm pits some of our favorite
writers against each other.
Hour Of Judgment by Susan R. Matthews, Avon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0380803143/fantasicfuturesbA
Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, Baen
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0671578278/fantasicfuturesbA
The Veiled Web by Catherine Asaro, Bantam Spectra
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0553581511/fantasicfuturesbA
The Radiant Seas by Catherine Asaro, Tor
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=031286714X/fantasicfuturesbA
Precursor by CJ Cherryh, DAW
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0886778360/fantasicfuturesbA
A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge, Orion/Millennium
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0312856830/fantasicfuturesbA
And the winner is ......
http://www.sfwa.org/News/99homer.htm
Veiled Web by Catherine Asaro. This is the non-Skolian Empire near-
future thriller in pbk I (Margaret) read. I really liked it. She
not only had a second (Skolian) novel on the same ballot but she
beat out Bujold and Cherryh!
Stephen Baxter won the Philip K. Dick Award (best paperback original,
1999 US publication) for his 1997 collection Vacuum Diagrams.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0061053953/fantasicfuturesbA
Bruce Sterling wins the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his novel
Distraction!
http://www.locusmag.com/2000/News/News05a.html
Distraction
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0553104845/fantasicfuturesbA
Bruce Sterling - http://lonestar.texas.net/~dub/sterling.html
(Congratulations!)
Chicon (Chicago Worldcon) has placed the Hugo Nomination list on the Web
http://www.chicon.org/hugos/nominees.htm
Nebulas were awarded May 21, 2000.
Butler, Octavia E.: Parable of the Talents
(Seven Stories Press, Nov98; Warner Books, Jan00)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1888363819/fantasicfuturesbA
is the 1999 Nebula Award winner for the novel category.
Other Nebula Winners
Novella: Ted Chiang, "Story of Your Life"
http://www.panix.com/~pnh/storylife.html
Novelette: Mary A. Turzillo, "Mars is No Place for Children"
(soon be available at Alexandria Digital Literature)
http://www.sfwa.org/members/turzillo/
Short Story: Leslie What, "The Cost of Doing Business"
http://www.wizards.com/amazing/595_CostofDoingBusiness.asp
Script: M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense
Special Awards
Grand Master: Brian W. Aldiss - http://www.brianwaldiss.com/
( Author of Non-Stop, Hothouse, "The Saliva Tree," Billion Year Spree,
Helliconia Spring...)
Author Emeritus: Daniel Keyes - http://shell.flite.net/~dkeyes/
(Flowers for Algernon, The Minds of Billy Milligan)
Not Quite an Award
Or at least not a Science Fiction Award. According to SciFi Wire,
legendary SF author Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) was
knighted May 26 at the home of the British ambassador to Sri Lanka,
more than two years after he was conferred the honor. The delay was
due to a bogus charge of child molestation.
It must be Sir Arthur's year... the father of geostationary orbit,
now has a satellite named after him in recognition of his pioneering
role in the development of global communications networks.
http://www9.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/04/19/clarke.satellite.reut/index.html
Forthcoming SF&Fantasy Books
New books announced from Neil Barrett, Jr., Ray Bradbury,
Charles De Lint, Gordon R. Dickson, Michael Flynn, Mercedes
Lackey, Julian May, and Elizabeth Moon.
June releases from Charles De Lint and Katherine Kurtz.
July releases from Lynn Abbey, Gordon R. Dickson, Nancy Kress, Spider
Robinson, J.K. Rowling, & Martha Wells.
AARRGH!
It's _The Book of Counted Sorrows_ all over again!!
Scholastic has just announced that Harry Potter Book Four will NOT be
called _Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament_ , as had been thought
for some months now. After all, Amazon.com had listed it as such and
plenty of people had prepaid for copies as soon as the book is published
July 8, 2000.
No, Book Four will instead be _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ .
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2000-06/27/12.00.books
So what is wrong with this picture?
Bestseller author Dean Koontz wanted to put "quotes" at the beginnings
of chapters of his various books. Rather than quoting from an actual
book, and because he knew what he wanted in the way of "quotes", he
simply wrote what he wanted to say and attributed these "quotes" to
a book he called _The Book of Counted Sorrows_ . The trouble came
because Mr. Koontz never got around to actually writing and publishing
_The Book of Counted Sorrows_ . Thus librarians had fans coming in,
for years, asking to borrow _The Book of Counted Sorrows_ because they
wanted to read EVERYTHING published by Mr. Koontz and because they were
intrigued by the snippets that they had read in Mr. Koontz's many books.
Only to be disappointed because frustrated librarians (not to mention
booksellers) could not provide this book.
A reference librarian specifically asked Mr. Koontz about this situation
and his reply was posted in something well suited for this purpose
called "Stumpers Listserv", so that librarians everywhere could have
something authoritative to answer this question.
Stumpers Archive (via Gopher)
gopher://gopher.cuis.edu:70/0R275248-277872-gopher_root%3A%5Bsearchidx%5Dstumpers-l_1994-01.txt%3B1
So where did the book title _Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament_
come from? Was it disinformation from the author or the publisher? I
heard more than one TV news report firmly stating that NOBODY knew
the title of book four and would not know until July 8. Perhaps some
clerk somewhere decided that since it was obvious that people were going
to purchase this book sight unseen and would pay money even before
actual publication, that a title was needed and, since the real title
was unavailable, this one was as plausible as the next for the purpose.
Remember this well for I predict that, in future years, librarians will
indeed be asked for the "lost" Harry Potter book. You know, the one
with the Doomspell Tournament!
Stumpers Official Web Home Page
http://www.cuis.edu.~stumpers/
What is "Stumpers"
http://www.law.du.edu/library/libinfo/hearsay/Spring_1995/stumpers.htm
On a MUCH happier note ...
Read on the Skolian Wide Web
According to Analog, their July/August double issue features the return
of Catherine Asaro with another strange and colorful tale of the Skolian
Empire. One that may please the gamers among us. Or possibly the, er,
role playing gamers. All that and a dramatic cover by George H.
Krauter.
At least part of the story is available at the site.
Analog - http://www.sfsite.com/analog/0007/issue_0007.html
(Margaret - Not only does the July/August issue of Analog have a
novella by Catherine Asaro with lovely cover art but also there are
short stories by both Larry Niven and Michael F. Flynn. So I am
a happy, happy camper indeed, with my copy of Analog freshly
obtained from my neighborhood Barnes & Noble store! :) )
For more sf&f new book listings and more detail (updated monthly),
see http://www.clever.net/cam/forthcomingsf.html .
Science Fiction on TV
Fall 2000 network TV schedules have been announced.
X-Files will, in fact, return for its eighth season but David Duchovny
will only be in about half of the episodes this next year.
Star Trek: Voyager will be back for its traditional seventh and last
season. (Star Trek:TNG & Star Trek:DS9 both bowed out after seven
seasons, remember?)
The cliffhanger left Janeway, Tuvok, & Torres assimilated, new drones
on the huge Borg ship. Shades of Picard/Locutus? Except the valiant
crew of Voyager have THREE captured crewmates to rescue, instead of
merely their captain.
Just today, word came (a bit of a teaser, in any case) about the fifth
Star Trek series. Berman & Braga are "about" to sit down and write the
pilot episode.
It does NOT sound like Capt. Hikaru Sulu and the adventures of the
U.S.S. Excelsior.
Yes, the article implies "Don't worry. Trust us." but these are the two
guys I (Margaret) trust most for the future of Trek so I'm feeling
pretty good about this.
The fifth series is set to debut in Fall 2001, with the next Star Trek
move due Thanksgiving 2001.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2000-06/27/10.30.tv
Please note that Farscape has a new timeslot as of
June 16, 2000: 8 PM-9 PM Central Fridays (an hour later).
Dark Angel (FOX) is the new listing on our page, debuting on Tuesday
8PM-9PM when the new fall season FINALLY gets underway. Apparently
the new season won't begin until October, after the Summer Olympics
(to be held Sept. 2000). (After all, how can you compete ratings-wise
with the quadriennial Olympics? Would that be fair??)
>From Magrathea's Science Fiction on TV pages
http://www.sftv.org/sftv/sftvschd.txt
Crusade Scripts Online & Other Straczynski Stuff via Bookface.com
J. Michael Straczynski has made available two of the unfilmed Crusade
scripts he had written via the online book publisher
http://www.bookface.com .
Several other short stories plus his recently completed novel are all
available to read for free or get printed copies for a fee. Be warned
that the interface is slow and also provides you with a constant
advertising stream, but it is worth it to check out the Crusade
scripts....
(Note from Margaret. Yes, you have to register but it IS free. I
didn't find the interface that slow and I was able to choose between
three type sizes. So I got a decently large type I was quite happy
with! Both of the Crusade scripts - one which had been meant for the
first season's cliffhanger were well worth the effort, in my humble
opinion!!)
Online Interviews & Articles of Note
http://www.mothership.com's EON Magazine had a multipart article on
Buffy's Stunt team that can still be accessed via their archives.
They also had a good article on "The Lathe of Heaven".
Over on Fandom.com, they've recently had an article on Farscape's second
season which is resuming next week [sic], going into detail on some of
the upcoming episodes and explaining what happened to the original
season opener "Re: Union"....
Farscape Renewed & Competing Conventions
Various sources have announced that Farscape has been renewed for a
[second season] and it has just been confirmed by an announcement by
SciFi on SciFiWire. It has just finally started airing in Australia
where it is being filmed.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-sfc.html?1999-07/27/17.49.sfc
There are now competing conventions on the first weekend in August. A
fan run ScaperCon is being held in St. Louis, MO August 5 & 6
( http://www.scaper.com/ ) while a commercial convention run by Creation
Entertainment is being held in Burbank, CA on August 5 & 6 as well
http://www.creationent.com/ [Note: Click Upcoming Events & do a FIND
on Farscape]
SFTV Scorecard
Renewed/Returning
FOX: Futurama, X-Files
NBC: 3rd Rock From the Sun
The WB: Buffy, Angel, Charmed, Roswell
UPN: Star Trek: Voyager, 7 Days, UPN's Blockbuster Shockwave Cinema
(UPN) Syndicated: Xena: Warrior Princess, Cleopatra 2525, Jack of All
Trades, Earth: Final Conflict, Stargate SG-1, Outer Limits, The Lost World,
Beastmaster, Relic Hunter
Cable: Stargate SG-1 (ShowTime - Season 5), Lexx (SFC Season 3),
First Wave (SFC-Season 3), Farscape (SFC)
Kids: Batman Beyond (Kids WB - Season 3)
Unknown/On the Fence:
Total Recall 2070 (Syndicated)
Men in Black (Kids WB)
Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles (Syn/SFC)
The Hunger (ShowTime Beyond)
Honey I Shrunk the Kids: The Series (Syn)
Cancelled/Ending
The Pretender (NBC)
The Profiler (NBC)
The Others (NBC)
Early Edition (CBS)
Now and Again (CBS)
La Femme Nikita (USA)
Outer Limits (ShowTime) - Ending after six seasons
Secret Agent Man (UPN)
Dilbert (UPN)
Poltergeist: The Legacy
Psi-Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal
Peter Benchley's Amazon
Total Recall 2070 (ShowTime)
GvsE (USA/SFC)
Sliders (SFC)
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (SFC)
Superman & Batman: The Animated Adventures (Kids WB)- Ended production
Roswell Conspiracies (Syn/SFC)
For more information, see our listing at:
http://www.clever.net/cam/sftv.html
Science Fiction at the Movies
Star Wars: Episode 2
According to SciFi Wire:
"Samuel L. Jackson may finally get to swing into action as a Jedi knight
in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode II, now in production in Australia.
While accepting the MTV Movie Award for best action sequence for the pod
race in Episode I, Lucas told Access Hollywood over the weekend to
expect Jackson on the podium in a couple of years to accept the award
for best fight."
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/email.cgi?story=2000-06/06/11.00.film
The first shots filmed were Senator Palpatine on a blue screen.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-film.html?2000-06/27/11.00.film
And if you are interested in experimental Star Wars shorts check out
http://www.evanmather.com/
For a slicker if less experimental SF short try Fahrenheit 452: The Art
Police http://www.galaxyonline.com/galaxy_tv/index.htm
She of the Rings
There has been a persistent rumor that as part of the increased
importance of the romance in the Lord of the Rings movie, Arwen
will accompany the other characters in the quest to destroy the
ring. The rumor has received new life recently due to reports of
a woman's screams during the filming of the Door of Moria. But
Ian McKellen (playing Gandalf) definitely scotches the rumor on
his web site. - http://www.mckellen.com/epost/l000616.htm
We quote "The 'spy' is incompetent if he/she ever existed. There were
NO Women at the doors of Moria and no screaming. And to put an end to
it - Arwen does NOT accompany the Fellowship in the movie."
The web site also notes that Radegast the Brown does not appear in the
movie.
DND Movie
The Dungeons & Dragon film continues to film in Prague with new
additions to the cast:
Jeremy Irons according to The Hollywood Reporter and Tom Baker as the
elderly elf, Hallvarth according to SFX Online. The official web site
is releasing the casting a bit at a time while waiting for the special
effects.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-film.html?1999-06/11/11.17.film
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-rumors.html?1999-07/23/12.31.rumors
http://www.dndmovie.com/
Asimov at the Movies
Now that Asimov is safely dead, Hollywood has discovered him.
Most recently Fox took an option on the Foundation series, but time
travel stories, "The Ugly Little Boy" and "End of Eternity" are also
in the works.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2000-06/27/10.15.film
Douglas (Hitch-Hiker's Guide) Adams at the Movies
Douglas knows where his screenplay is. He completed it in early June
and announced it on the forum of his web-site. Word is that his
director loved it.
http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/thread.cgi?1822,0
I'll Be Back
They finally came up with enough money to make Arnold Schwarzenegger
a Terminator offer he couldn't afford to refuse. Terminator III will be
a prequel.
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Berkwits_Jeff/t3.html
DVDs4U
Science Fiction DVDs are reviewed in New Media Review. Titles include
Abyss - http://nmreview.com/reviews/DVDs/abyss/index.htm
Last Night (End of the world flick)
http://nmreview.com/reviews/DVDs/lastnight/index.htm
The Astronaut's Wife -
http://nmreview.com/reviews/DVDs/astrowife/index.htm
New Media Review - http://nmreview.com/index.html
Science Fiction (and Fantasy) Gaming
On March 1 we passed the 10th anniversary of the Secret Service Raid
on Steve Jackson Games.
http://www.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect13.02.html#I
(This was the birth of the EFF and the EFF is sadly still a necessity.
Your congress critters are even now attempting to make it illegal to
link to certain information and to allow secret searches of your
computer without a warrant. We would be far better off without
methamphetamine in circulation, but believing or saying otherwise
should not make you a criminal. Check out H.R. 833 Title XVII/H.R. 2987
http://www.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect13.05.html#I ).
Steve Jackson's Games is doing their first ever Gurps sourcebook based
on a computer game. Games based on games seems kind on the incestuous
side, but in this case, the popular Myth series from Bungie games has
an elaborate background and a fair amount of story depth in its own
right (as well as lots of mindless violence).
Steve Jackson Games - http://www.sjgames.com/
Oddly enough, Bungie has been bought out by Microsoft (interested in
pushing their Xbox gaming platform). Bungie has an interesting FAQ
on the acquisition that contains the question:
Would you like to listen to a rambling tirade that condemns this
decision and includes words like "traitors," "sellouts," "whores"
and a great deal of profanity?
The answer unsurprisingly is No.
Having started the process of games from games, Steve Jackson Games
isn't stopping there. They have acquired the rights to do a Gurps
adoption of Firaxis Game's computer strategy game, Alpha Centauri.
Steve Jackson Games Daily Illuminator - http://www.sjgames.com/ill/
Factor 5's video game, "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine" is now
starting debugging according to Nintendorks.com - The bastion of
intellectual stimulus. - http://www.nintendorks.com/ .
Wizards of the Coast are Finally putting their indelible mark on the
Role Playing favorite, Dungeons and Dragons. The Third Edition is on
its way at about $20. per volume.
Players Handbook Coming August 11,2000
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0786915501/fantasicfuturesbA
Monster Manual Coming in October
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0786915528/fantasicfuturesbA
Dungeon Master's Guide Coming in September
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=078691551X/fantasicfuturesbA
Science Fiction and the Internet
You don't want to miss the hilarious SF story by Terry Bisson from the
short story collection "Bears Discover Fire", now on the Web at -
http://www.barryland.com/meat.html .
Gregory Benford holds forth on the deeper meaning of Science Fiction at
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Benford_Greg/deep_time.htm
SF Zines
Long time news-zine publisher, and winner of three fanzine Hugo Awards,
Andy Porter has sold SF Chronicle to DNA Publications which publishes
or handles the business end of several small-press genre magazines,
including Aboriginal SF, Absolute Magnitude, Dreams of Decadence,
Fantastic Stories and Weird Tales. Porter will remain with SFC as news
editor. DNA also plans to increase the magazine's frequency to monthly
from bimonthly.
Forthcoming SF, Fantasy, & Gaming Cons
Regrettably, neither Clif nor I was able to make Consortium, June 9-11.
We would have been there but my niece is getting married in August and
the wedding shower & engagement party was the same weekend, in San
Antonio. (Major family get-together. My eldest niece, first wedding
in her generation in our family. You get the picture.)
So, would someone please email us a con report. Did we say please? :)
Speaking of email, THANK YOUs to Shari Eggleston for letting us know
about UncommonCon (Nov. 24-26, 2000/Metroplex) and Charles Fewlass for
letting us know about ProtoCon 2000 (Nov.3-5, 2000/College Station).
Also, several people have recently emailed us updates/corrections for
their con listings. THANKS to y'all, too!! :)
Coming up in July we have Creation salutes STAR TREK, SCI-FI & XENA
CONVENTION July 8 & 9, at the Radisson Airport in Houston, Conestoga
2000: A Science Fiction & Mystery Convention, July 14-16, 2000 at
the Sheraton Tulsa and Crescent City Con XV, July 28-30, 2000 at the
Best Western Landmark Hotel (Metairie) in the New Orleans area.
(Note, if anyone wants to work the Creation con, please call Starbase
Houston immediately & leave a message on their WARPline at 713-790-0044.
They'd probably love to hear from you!)
Then, it's on to August with ArmadilloCon 22, August 18-20, 2000, in
Austin. (Bless her heart, my niece managed to set her wedding date
one week before, so Clif & I can still make ArmadilloCon!)
Also in August Bubonicon 32, August 25-27, 2000 in Albuquerque, New
Mexico and, of course, Chicon 2000 (The 58th World Science Fiction
Convention), August 31- September 4, 2000 in Chicago.
For a more complete listing see our monthly What's Happening list
at http://www.clever.net/cam/concalendar.html .
Summer is Here
Starbase Houston has had their annual chili cookoff and their annual
pool party. They have even picnicked in Memorial Park with the Houston
chapter of the Imperial Klingon Empire (IKE). Can the hottest summer
days be far behind? :-)
Actually Starbase is rethinking their traditional role and is
considering becoming a general SF organization. But maybe not.
Stay tuned.
Currently they are planning to work the Creation Con coming up July
8th and 9th with guests Tim Russ (Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager), Bruce
Campbell (of Evil Dead movies, Hercules, Xena and Jack of all Trades),
Ted Raimi (Joxer on Xena and Hercules) and Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman
Rand on Star Trek)
Creation Con - http://www.creationent.com/ (Click Upcoming Events)
Starbase Houston - http://www.starbasehouston.org/
The Clear Lake Science Fiction Book Club is meeting once a month at
IHOP on NASA Rd 1. If you're interested check them out at
http://www.egroups.com/group/CLSciFibook though you have to join the
egroup list to read the messages.
The Saturday Morning Ritual Breakfast group is looking forward to
returning to Buffet Express Restaurant and Grill in late July. They
have been wandering between less satisfactory breakfast venues far
longer than was originally anticipated.
Several Unlimited has finally finished up the last of the great Internet
Zine sale business for this year and are settling down for a 'relaxing'
summer run of activities. - http://members.aol.com/ErikaF/su/ .
Our friends in FACT are busy gearing up for ArmadilloCon and after that
the World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi in October.
The FACT reading group plans to finish out the summer with The Rift by
Walter J. Williams in July and Stardoc by S. L. Viehl and Mad Ship by
Robin Hobb in August. As always, they meet at Adventures in Crime and
Space. And speaking of the bookstore, they have posted photos on their
web site from the signings.
FACT - http://www.fact.org/
FACT Reading Group - http://www.crimeandspace.com/reading/index.html
Adventure in Crime & Space - http://www.crimeandspace.com/
Terry Pratchett Photos - http://www.crimeandspace.com/evmar00.html
Sean Stewart Photos - http://www.crimeandspace.com/evapr00.html
For more information on Texas and Houston Science Fiction Organizations
see our Web page at http://www.clever.net/cam/clubslist.html .
Insanity and the Internet
We usually try to limit discussion of the Internet and its crisis of the
day to matters pertaining to Science Fiction.
But in some kind of reducto-absurdium of intellectual property rights,
British Telecom is claiming that they own the patent rights to
hyperlinks.
You know, the handy little links that tie the web together.
The time to shoot all the lawyers (Pat Bushman excepted
If software patents are allowed at all, they should be restricted to 5
Sadly, it looks to me (Clif) that the patent does indeed cover
The principle should be that simply doing something on a computer does
Censorship Follies
Exorcist Exorcized
Director William Friedkin told The Hollywood Reporter that he will
Friedkin told the paper, "rejecting it on the grounds that it was too
The MPAA approved a revised trailer.
In the meantime, Friedkin has made the banned trailer available on
Muggles for Harry Potter!!!
Every fan of J.K. Rowling's delightful Harry Potter books (one of
There have been moves to ban Harry Potter books in at least 13 states,
But restricting the use of books that kids want to read violates their
So says the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the
For that matter, so say Clif and Margaret.
Parents have a right, within limits, to control the ideas their children
The purpose of Muggles for Harry Potter is to support kids, parents
You can join Muggles for Harry Potter at
And you can shortly (after July 8!) enjoy the fourth installment of the
Faster than Light?
Dr. Lijuan Wang has a paper under peer review at Nature on super-luminal
Of course the people over at FTL Magazine have their own take on the
And if faster than light, light sounds too Star Trekish for you
The AI Shuffle
Artificial Intelligence comes in several flavors.
One flavor, sometimes known as GOFAI (Good Old Fashioned AI) is about
(Symbolic Math, Expert Systems, Speech Recognition, etc. are all areas
Two other flavors of AI are connectionism which hooks up lots and lots
Your brain works the first way. The behavior of your neurons seems
Artificial Neurons have been around for a long time now, and there have
You wouldn't know it from the hype though.
Circuit on a Silicon Chip Mimics Wiring of the Brain (AP story)
And there is a relatively sober account in Nature with lots of details
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v405/n6789/full/405947a0_fs.html
The other flavor of AI, genetic algorithms, essentially imitates
Slow evolution can be understood in terms of random variation and
Anyway, genetic algorithms are kind of an all purpose tool to throw at a
They don't work miracles and they aren't magic, but they do work. And
It's always neat to see useful applications of AI and the folks at the
Nowadays you can make a supercomputer by wiring lots and lots of PCs
The trouble is wiring them to talk to one another so that computers that
This is a hard problem. There are good solutions but they tend to be
You can read how they did it at
Of course scientists are now doing Genetic Algorithms using real DNA for
The DNA Computer - http://www2.tpgi.com.au/users/aoaugh/dna_comp.html
AI may be lagging behind schedule (HAL should be online by now) but
Speaking of fake AI done with smoke and mirrors (maybe), an AI smut
Nano Nano
Looking forward to the time of atomic scale factories, one of the
Nature's answer has been to let molecules of liquid kick stuff around at
According to the American Institute of Physics, scientists at Tel Aviv
Nano-locomotives.
In their scheme there is a freight yard which consists of a
The engine, in its simplest form, consists of three tiny clusters of
By careful timing and correlating of the light pulses, the engine can be
They have a "movie" on the Web of how the process would work.
Nano Ropes Anyone?
They have now measured the strength of carbon nanotubes with destructive
Carbon Stretched to the Breaking Point -
Nanospot
There is a new specialized search engine for nanotech at
The Institute of Physics just released a new technical brief on
Talking about it, AlphaGalileo, the European Internet-based news
Institute of Physics Technical Brief Series
Instead of saying "seemed impossible" they could have said "seemed like
Sounding even more like Science Fiction is Bryan Bruns, "Nanotechnology
Bio-Futures
The big news from Biology is that the human genome has now been
Those who are into Radical Life Extension will want to peruse the
Then Ben Bova signs in with some serious questions.
Given that we can extend the human lifetime in the next 20 years by a
The New York Times at
If you want to travel to Cold Spring Harbor (site of an annual genome
Of the 228 scientist betting so far, the average is 62,598 genes, with
By comparison, 19,099 genes are apparently required to run the C.
The big winner in all this should be the pharmacists, particularly as we
Space, The Final Frontier.
What's made of sugar and spice and everything nice?
Apparently clouds in the center of the galaxy.
Robots Flew Spaceships
Ever wonder what happened to the good old fashioned humanoid robot
And so NASA has created a space robot, a Robonaut currently under
Of course, we are not talking about competition for Star Trek's
Robonaut: Shape of Things to Come
The International Space Station has been fixed, moved to a higher
The Compton Observatory was successfully crashed to Earth before
A U.S.-French team has released a report, "Understanding the
Space storms can now be predicted more accurately. The arrival from
Galileo has ducked back outside the magnetosphere of Jupiter into
Galileo Mission - http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov
Readings from the TOPEX/Poseidon mission indicates that La Nina is
June '99 announcement - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/elnino/990629.html
The Arctic Ozone doesn't seem to be recovering as fast as expected.
NASA used the Arecibo telescope for the first time to bounce radar
Kleopatra images - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/kleopatra
In late May, NASA released 20,000 new Mars photos. The archive now has
You get the idea.
And yes, there are layers in the photos of clouds, but not a lot.
Valles Marineris is weird. It has dunes, but they can't be dunes.
Image Archive - http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/
In July, NASA will decide what to launch at Mars in 2003. The current
Water Water Everywhere...
You knew I was going to get to it eventually. Unless you are news dead
If we haven't seen water on the surface of Mars, it's certainly not for
If the water still harbors life as we think we know it (and can get to
The other possibility is the great Valles Marineris Canyon gouged across
If there is underground water on Mars and if it forms a water table and
Interesting is Chandor Chasm. Again we are deep enough that water might
But still not clear. No smoking gun that says water.
Still, when the rumors and then the confirmed rumors started to fly
In fact, the photos with the smoking gun showed no water at all.
The new images show the smallest features ever observed from Mars orbit,
Look again at http://ftlmagazine.com/images/wateronmars.jpg and similar
These features are comparatively rare. They occur in a few hundred
What are they telling us?
Imagine an underground water supply similar to an aquifer. Maybe its
But behind the wall of ice the water continues to seep. If it can find
The thing is, on Mars like the moon, even the craters have craters.
These gullies are relatively new. They are uncratered. They are
I would certainly like a closer look at those gullies, and you can be
But in all of Mars, we know a few hundred places it might make sense
The Write Stuff (Pen and Ink Optional!)
We want to welcome the Fort Bend Writers Guild to our pages. They
D. C. Fontana muses on getting story ideas at
When is a book there but not really there?
When it is in my Java sandbox! I think that Bookface.com (mentioned
To me it's a perfect example of "Look, but don't touch".
(Clif, on the other hand, tends to feel that nothing is fool-proof
Some of Bookface.com's offerings are but a single chapter (as is
I think that new writers should definitely consider Web sites such as
Anybody care where the next generation of sf readers is coming from?
Reading for the Future
Good book? After you finish reading it, ... pass it along to a
Reading for the Future is a volunteer organization whose aim is to
Our motivation is best expressed by an open letter, written by David
RFF Utah is collecting SF&F books and related materials for various
Utah group
Of course, J.K Rowling, bless her heart, may have single-handedly
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (bk 4) is 600+ pages. If the kids
Also, we librarians have been on the job.
See these pages from the Young Adult Library Services Association:
Books YALSA is already encouraging teens to read
Notice Orson Scott Card made the Top 10 list
Look who won this in 1998 & 1999!
FFFeedback
We heard from Ian Feller:
I am the manager of media relations for CrossGen Comics, a new
Starting the end of this month, we will be publishing a line of
As a sci-fi/fantasy and comic fan my entire life, I can honestly
Always happy to get an impartial review, Ian. :-)
Our readers are not primarily comics fans, but they are SF fans and
- Clif
We heard from Anne Collins:
Just a quick note: "mysticism," as I understand it, refers to an
As Karl uses the term, "mysticism" seems to refer to anything we don't
I don't wish to define the presence of mysticism in science fiction
--Anne
-------
:-)
Well, Karl's usage IS a bit loose, but it is a fairly popular usage,
I, myself, use the term in a generalized sense (substituting any
Specifically, as I hinted in the last Info-Alert, I do believe that
- Clif
We also heard again from Carl Pearson:
Hi, Guys,
Are you going to Chicago? Am I going to Chicago?
Why didn't I vote in San Antonio? Ghu knows... This'll be my 3rd
If'n you know of anyone who can't make it and wants to sell their badge,
My Hugo vote is for Neal Stephenson. He deserved it for The Diamond Age
Must say, though, that I haven't read all the other nominees.
Say HI! to Bill & all for me. See 'ya!
Neal Stephenson?
What? Over A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge? - Clif
Anyone looking to sell their Chicon badge, note that Carl's email
Unfortunately it will take a small miracle to get us (Clif & Margaret)
The two main problems with being a graduate student are lack of money
(Plus, my niece has burned up two weeks of my vacation this year- what
Lois McMaster Bujold and Vernor Vinge would be a hard choice for me, not
(Note from Margaret: But Clif - a Civil Campaign is practically
Stephenson is more on the edge. I'm glad he's there, but he probably
- Clif
We heard from Panda Richards...
Teddy Harvia AND Brad Foster are up? Unfair!! I know both of them & they
Hugo Indecisions are rampant!
Don't forget you owe us a Vegas trip report. :-)
- Bear hugs for the Panda,
Thanks to everyone who wrote!!!
We also heard from Catherine Asaro (someday we will get a writer on our
There was also a note from Matin Abdullah to tell us about the Terry
Be seeing you!
Margaret A. Fincannon, Friends of Fandom Info-Alert Staff
And now, THE FINE PRINT DU JOUR...
To be removed from this Mailing List, please send a remove request to
rapidly approaching.
years max. And they ought to have someone competent examining them.
hyperlinks. And for all I know it may have proceeded any other
"prior art". The patent in question is at
not make it an independent invention. It shouldn't be patentable unless
it would still be patentable if a person replaced the computer.
Wired Story at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37095,00.html
appeal the ban on a new trailer touting the re-release of his 1973
film The Exorcist. The Motion Picture Association of America banned
the new trailer for the Oscar-winning horror classic, saying it was
"too intense," the trade paper reported.
intense is like rejecting it on the grounds that it's too funny. It
makes no sense at all and seems to be contrary to the purpose of the
ratings board, which is not to judge content, but simply to issue a
rating based on certain material in the shots--nudity, excessive
violence or language--and this trailer has none of that."
the Ain't It Cool News Web site.
http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=6232
Warner Bros. is re-releasing The Exorcist Sept. 22 in a restored
version, with 11 minutes of previously unreleased footage.
which is nominated for the Year 2000 Hugos) knows that a muggle is
non-magical person, unlike Harry and his friends. Unfortunately some
people are offended by the fact that Harry and his friends use
witchcraft. Others believe the books are too violent.
according to the American Library Association. There are reports of
banning in school districts in Colorado and Kansas, however most of
those challenges are still pending or have been resolved without
imposing restrictions. Restrictions such as those imposed by the
Zeeland, Michigan school district which has banned read alouds,
removed the books from display in elementary school libraries and
requires parental permission to check out the books or use them for
book reports.
First Amendment rights and helps produce an illiterate society.
Association of Booksellers for Children, the Association of American
Publishers, the Children's Book Council, the Freedom to Read Foundation,
the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of
Teachers of English, and PEN American Center.
are exposed to. The government, in whatever guise, does not.
and teachers who are fighting school officials and others who want to
ban classroom "read alouds" of Potter books and other controversial
works, remove the books from library shelves and otherwise restrict
their use.
http://www.mugglesforharrypotter.org/ .
adventures of Harry Potter and his Hogwarts pals!
propagation of light pulses. Presumably these pulses cannot be used to
carry information faster than light, or relativity allows us to
construct a scheme to send messages backwards in time.
Paper at http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/lwan/ .
matter. http://ftlmagazine.com/images/ftlcartoonlightsplitter.gif
then how about putting your lasers on stun. An ultraviolet light
laser would create a path through the air capable of conducting
electricity for over 300 feet. When the current hits you it interferes
with the impulses controlling your muscles making movement impossible.
You might think that this would be not so good for your heart, but
it and other vital organs would be protected by a greater thickness of
body tissue. It is already possible to buy stun weapons, (major
consumer, our benevolent government) but they have to touch you in
order to be effective.
http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_342000/342188.stm
the use and abuse of advanced data structures and involves itself
with heuristic search semantic networks, and a host of related topics.
Typically once something works and everyone understands it, it is no
longer considered part of AI.
that have graduated outside the area of strict AI).
of relatively simple components to do a job, and genetic algorithms.
relatively simple, but there are a lot of them all working at the
same time and they are wired together in ways that only make partial
sense to us.
been occasional advances in understanding how to organize and train
them. There have even been special boards to simulate neural networks
that could be plugged into your PC. But now they are putting models of
cortical circuits directly in hardware, creating devices that are both
analog and digital. This is tons faster than doing the same thing with
software, but is really nothing new.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/083127.htm
Wired Like a Human (New Scientist)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_224435.html
and references.
evolution to evolve combinations of features that work well together.
survival of the fittest, but once you start creating offspring from
the more successful individuals which are a linearly ordered cross
between the two parents, the whole process takes off and works much
much much better than it seems it should. We can understand part of
the reason mathematically (above average substrings tend to increase
in the population exponentially) but not even that seems to explain it.
problem we don't know how to solve any other way.
they work best on big fast supercomputers.
University of Kentucky Electrical Engineering department design big fast
supercomputers out of cheap components.
together and letting them work in parallel (kind of coming at
connectionism from the other direction).
need to send data to each other can do so in a minimum time without
interfering with other data transfers.
kind of expensive. So the EE [electrical engineering, read hardware]
people there treat it as a genetic algorithm problem and let it run
on their supercomputers. They get solutions that let them cut the
cost of computing from $3,000 per GFLOP to about $650 per GFLOP.
http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/klat2/klat2-1.html though they
spend the first two Web pages describing the problem and don't get
around to genetic algorithms till the third page.
massively parallel, if dumb computing. Most recently they have been able
to use the process to solve chess problems.
DNA Computer Solves Chess Problems
http://www.exosci.com/main/news/shownews/?id=974
using a combination of AI approaches, NASA contractors are at work
on Virtual Personalities.
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-094.txt
Not that there aren't lots of critics ready to yell, "Smoke and
Mirrors".
filter has gone berserk. Supposedly they had a neural network which
had been trained to recognize pornographic images. Some experts are
claiming that it never could have worked and the owners are claiming
that it did, they just can't find a copy that works now.
Wired Story - http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36923,00.html
questions has always been how stuff gets moved from one place to
another.
random til it gets somewhere it needs to be, helping out the process
with membranes that can be selectively bypassed to control the
concentration of the constructed stuff. About the only thing you say
for the scheme is that it works.
University in Israel have an idea for a somewhat more organized
approach.
lithographically prepared corrugated surface, something like
the shape of an egg carton (on the microscopic level, anyway;
to the naked eye the surface looks flat).
metal atoms connected by two "springs." Each spring is actually a
photochromophore molecule, one whose length can be expanded or shrunk
with light. So to get the engine to move, laser light is shot in from
above, the molecule expands, and one metal particle moves into
depression on the surface.
made to move along like an inchworm dragging chains of molecules behind
it. Since the light pulses are controlled on a macroscopic basis, this
avoids some of the communications problems between scales that exist in
other schemes. (Ok, now we have nano machines circulating through your
body, how do we tell them what to do?).
http://www.aip.org/physnews/graphics/html/nanoloco.html
testing and they seem to be as strong as the computer simulations said
they would be (stronger than the high tech composites used in the Space
Shuttle).
http://focus.aps.org/v5/st26.html
http://www.nanospot.org/ . And it has lots to search from.
nanotech.
centre for science, engineering and technology said, "Small is getting
big ... fast. Minute machines that can travel inside the body, gears
that depend on atoms repelling each other and molecular alternatives
to semiconductors are ideas that, even ten years ago, would have seemed
impossible. Nanotechnology - producing machines and systems at molecular
levels (an atom is around 0.3 nanometres in diameter) - is turning these
ideas into reality, bringing changes to computing, communication,
aerospace and medicine."
http://www.iop.org/IOP/BI/techbriefs.html
AlphaGalileo Comments
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ReadNotice.cfm?releaseid=3860
Science Fiction".
and the Commons: Implications of Open Source Abundance in Millennial
Quasi-Commons" - http://www.cm.ksc.co.th/~bruns/opennan2.htm .
sequenced, (or close enough for government work) under budget,
and way ahead of schedule.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/06/23/genome/index.html is the latest
story as I type, but there will probably be updates before you read
this. The next step is making sense of all the information. Also read
http://www.rapidcontent.com/galaxyonline/ap.articles.phtml?a=3953855d.43a7.10&c=ap.science&d=20000623
for a bit more detail.
March issue of Meme at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind9903&L=meme&F=&S=&P=50
Nor should you ignore the Galaxy Online Article at
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Fossel_Michael/aging_part1.html
factor of 10 as now seems likely, should we?
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Bova_Ben/fossel_editorial.html
http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/052300sci-human-genome.html
describes a betting pool for just how many genes there are in the
genome.
conference) to place your bet the details are at
http://www.ensembl.org/genesweep.html .
a high of 200,000 and a low of 27,462.
elegans roundworm and 13,601 genes are required to construct a
Drosophila fruit fly, the only two animals whose full genomes have
hithertofore been decoded.
figure out which genes control which proteins.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_224436.html
beloved in fiction and comics? After all, a wide range of tools
are made for humans, so that only a humanoid robot could wield the
full range of tools without the additional cost of making special
tools. With our current state of AI, it's cheaper to make special
tools than it is make either a humanoid robot or to program it to
use human tools. The exception to the software cost is when you
use a person to drive the robot remotely. But then it's usually
cheaper and easier to have the person do the task directly. Still,
there is one place where those economic facts break down. Space.
development at the Johnson Space Center. A human controlling the
Robonaut can exhibit more dexterity and higher performance that a
human suited with bulky EVA equipment. And of course, once you
have the hardware, the software can follow. Some software is
necessary in any case. The control system for Robonaut includes
an onboard, real time CPU with miniature data acquisition and
power management in a small, environmentally hardened body. Off-board
guidance is delivered with human supervision using a telepresence
control station with human tracking.
Cmdr. Data; the Robonaut is not "fully functional". In fact it has
dexterous five-fingered hand and human-scale arm. The rest
would not be mistaken as human at all. On the other hand (no
pun intended), Robonaut has been designed so that the dexterity
and stamina exhibited can vastly exceed even that of an unsuited
astronaut. Its sensors includes thermal, position, tactile, force
and torque instrumentation, with over 150 sensors per arm. In
fact, Robonaut has been designed to be a perfect match for the Space
Station's EVA access corridors and airlocks built for humans.
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er_er/html/robonaut/robonaut.html
Robonaut's To Lend A Hand
http://www.spacer.com/spacecast/news/robot-99h.html
more stable orbit, and generally spiffed up with new batteries,
a new antenna, a brand new construction crane, fire extinguishers,
smoke detectors and fans. Now it waits, empty, for the long delayed
Russian Crew Module. It's scheduled to go up July 12. Two weeks
later, the heart of the space station will be in place.
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-101.txt
another gyro quit and it became uncontrollable. The Compton, while
designed for five years, got in almost 10 years of useful gamma
ray observations.
Distribution of Near-Earth Asteroids" in the June Science. Their
best guess is that there are some 900 killer asteroids, one
kilometer or larger, that are potential threats to life on Earth.
Only about half have been discovered and tracked so far. Of those,
none is a threat for the next century, but our projections aren't
good out to thousands of years. The search continues.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/June00/Asteroid.hazards.deb.html
the Sun of the billion-ton electrified-gas clouds that cause severe
space storms, taking out satellites and disrupting communication,
can now be predicted to within a half-day, a great improvement over
the best previous estimates of two to five days.
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-095.txt
This is good news as we are currently in the 11-yr. peak of the
solar flare cycle.
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sr/current/index.html#IntheNews
the solar wind for the first time since early '96. The occasion
is an upcoming stereo view of the interface between Jupiter's
magnetosphere and the solar wind as Cassini swings by Jupiter in
December to slingshot on to Saturn. Cassini will also pass Phoebe
Jupiter's outermost moon, at 2,000 kilometers.
Cassini Mission - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
fading while the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is still controversial.
Insufficient data. It's worth keeping in mind that La Nina looked
like it was fading last June and it came back from nowhere.
Pacific Decadal Oscillation -
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/elnino/20000118.html
More Pacific Decadal Osc. -
http://topex-www.jpl.nasa.gov/discover/PDO.html
signals off a main belt asteroid, Kleopatra. The computer assembled
the echoes into images. Kleopatra is mostly metal and shaped like
bone.
a full year of Mars. One of the most interesting aspect is the layering
visible everywhere. Gives the geologists lots to do. As Dr Seuss might
say: There are layers in the North. There are layers in the South.
There are layers in the canyons; there are layers in the craters; there
are layers in the troughs; there are layers in the crater's craters.
There are layers at the poles. There are layers in the pits. There are
layers in the walls. Layers everywhere it fits. There are layers in the
peaks. I bet there's layers in the air. There are layers everywhere.
Can you really see them large? Yes, we can easily see them large.
Can you see them barely just? Yes, we can see them down to the size of
a bus. Can you see them in craters on the tops of volcanoes. Yes, we
can see ...
They are too close together for dunes. Their ridges are too sharp
at the crest. Their slopes are too symmetrical. They appear to be
a specific layer of material that has undergone erosion, but what
kind of erosion? Apparently not wind.
Interesting Subset -
http://photojournal/cgi-bin/PIADBSearch.pl?NewReleases
also http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/may_2000/
and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs .
choices are a bigger and better Mars scientific orbiter mission or a
large scientific rover landing using an airbag cocoon like the '97
Pathfinder mission. Kind of like the last rover was supposed to be
before the funds were cut. Or, in theory, NASA could decide not to
proceed with a launch and proceed with its Mars house-cleaning. Of
course that's going to be hard to do if there is a very very
interesting area of Mars that the everybody really really wants a
better look at. Say one associated with the W-word.
you've heard the magic words, "Water on Mars".
lack of looking. Not that we really expected to see any. The pressure
on Mars is too low. Any free water would boil off like sweat on Red
Adair at work. (Red Adair - world famous now-retired wildcat oil rig
firefighter - Margaret). So any water must be underground.
it), it would need to lie close to the surface. And the best candidate
for water near the surface might be the site of an old sea. The water
table once underground might be stable for a very long period of time
with no further losses. So are there any old sea beds we can recognize
laying around the surface of Mars? Not clear. Scientists came up with
two candidates for extended features they thought might mark the coasts
of an old sea. But the altitude data knocked off one of them. The
surface of a sea must be very close to flat. The other candidate does
seem to be fairly flat, so it survived that test, but it's still not
clear.
half of Mars. It goes down 5 miles, and is the place where the air
pressure is the greatest, the place where only a little more pressure
could give us open water as a possibility.
if we go below the water table, we might see signs of seepage. And
that's what the image at
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/06/21/mars.water/story.mars.crater.jpg
seems to show. If it's hard to make out what you are seeing, look at
http://space.com/images/v_mars_water2_062000_03.jpg which is annotated.
This is Noachis Terra crater and it's deep enough that MAYBE water could
last a while at the bottom without boiling off. But these features
might not be water at all. The "seepage" features could be lava for
example. Not clear.
last a little while. The scenario here is that there could be one last
salt water spring. The water would boil away and a trickle of new water
would take its place. Chandor Chasm is shown in what is presumably
false color at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/795000/images/_799552_pia300.jpg .
about water on the surface of Mars, a lot of people assumed that
they had found something definitive in Chandor Chasm or someplace
like it. That's why you saw headlines like CNN's "Report: Water
Springs Found on Mars".
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/06/21/mars.water/index.html .
http://ftlmagazine.com/images/wateronmars.jpg
But they show where water has been.
about the size of a sport-utility vehicle. And they resemble remarkably
features left by flash floods on earth.
images shown at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/mars or
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/june2000/ . We see layers going
down the wall of a cliff (some places they go down a crater wall,
sometimes a valley wall). About 100 to 400 meters beneath the surface,
we see the beginning of a deep gully or channel with a collapsed region
at its upper end. (An alcove if you will). As the gully runs down the
slope, it thins to almost nothing and ends in an area of accumulated
debris (an "apron") that appears to have been transported down the
slope. In the picture we are looking at, the gullies don't even reach
the bottom of the slope. And there isn't just one of these, there is
gully after gully after gully (if gullies they are).
locations of the many tens of thousands of places the orbiter camera
has looked. They occur both in the north and south hemispheres but
mainly in the south. They are in some of the coldest locations of
Mars apart from the poles, generally between latitudes 30 degrees
and 70 degrees, and usually on slopes that get the least amount of
sunlight during each Martian day.
fed somehow by melting ice at the poles, maybe by the underground
remnants of an ancient ocean (there are some obvious problems with
both). But assume it's there. Water exposed to the air boils, which is
to say it evaporates violently. But evaporation cools. And so if
the water supply seeps out into the air, and it's cold enough anyway,
it freezes and the water is trapped behind a wall of ice. Where the
wall of ice doesn't form, the water bleeds away into the Martian
atmosphere.
another path, it does. And if it can't, the pressure builds. And
builds. And builds. Who knows how long the ice wall holds? But
eventually it shatters and water is released onto the surface of Mars!
Judging by the evidence an average of 2,500 cubic meters (about seven
community sized swimming pools' worth) bursts out and carries all
before it. It gouges deep gullies as it boils madly forward and down,
leaving its mark on a strange world. But all the time the water
surges forward, the atmosphere is winning, and all too soon there is
no more water, only a cold dry record dug in the wall. Behind it the
water once more seeps into the air, boils, freezes, and waits behind
a wall of newly forged ice.
The craters act as kind of a clock that tells how old a feature is.
And the planet has global dust storms and the dust slowly erodes
features.
themselves uneroded. They are the youngest features we have seen
on Mars. But young on Mars is a relative term. Maybe the gully
in the center of the picture was millions of years old when water
lapped the Sphinx. Maybe the one next to it was created yesterday.
We just can't tell.
sure I am not alone. But a global orbiter is just not going to get
up close and personal and it's going to be a real job to get a rover
down the cliff to the source of one of those gullies.
to dig a well.
don't have a Web site of their own yet but they meet on a regular
basis, sponsor contests, and hold writers workshops. Thanks to
Roger Paulding (rapdunit@aol.com) for emailing me and letting me
know about this active group!
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Fontana_Dorothy/StoryTime.htm
while Joe Haldeman expands on potatoes as a writing tool.
http://www.galaxyonline.com/wired_galaxy/contributors/Haldeman_Joe/Column2.htm
.
earlier) has neatly solved the problem of how to share new copyrighted
material with grateful sf fans AND for free by requiring that said fans
read the works using Java-enabled Web browsers.
against a sufficiently intelligent fool. Making it harder to steal
is undoubtedly a good move, but I'm willing to bet that its a matter
of time before you can download a program to steal you a copy of the
Java code to reread at will).
becoming more and more common on the Web) but they also make it easy to
go straight to a bookseller such as Amazon.com to purchase the entire
book if you like the chapter well enough. Also, some of the offerings
are "classics", old enough to be in the public domain.
Bookface.com as places to showcase their new work. I recognized some
of the sf authors with works available on Bookface.com (such as
Straczynski, of course) but I had never heard of some of the others.
Plus all the major genres are represented, not just sf.
http://www.bookface.com/
See a lot of young faces at your favorite cons lately? How about
getting them interested in reading sf & fantasy while you have a
shot at a captive audience? Yes, at schools, particularly middle
schools!
student. Reading for the Future (RFF) is an international alliance
of science fiction writers, readers and educators dedicated to a
fascinating idea: encouraging kids to read by introducing them
to the best of speculative fiction.
increase the readership of science fiction, fantasy, and other
speculative fiction. RFF Utah is Utah's chapter of Reading for
the Future. We seek to work with teachers and libraries around
the state to provide them with books and curriculum materials that
use and promote science fiction and fantasy.
Brin, Gregory Benford, and Greg Bear, three well known science fiction
authors. Essentially, we believe that speculative fiction, and in
particular science fiction, helps us to think about the future.
It also is a lot of fun to read. As the readership of these genres
grows older, we must work to bring this literature to younger readers,
who will keep the genres alive with their fresh enthusiasm.
projects. If you would like a speaker on Reading for the Future, we
may be able to help you find someone.
Read all about it here.
http://www.jps.net/helgem/rffutah
solved our problem for us with the runaway success of her Harry
Potter series! (Plus, Harry ages one year in each book. So the
[eventually seven] books will appeal to a wide range of kids,
reading at various levels!)
don't choke, then we're in! (On the other hand, if the kids panic at
a book two or three times the length of a normal kids' book, Harry
Potter could become a has-been quickly. Though if anyone could pull
this off, I believe it would be Harry Potter & his fellow Hogwarts
wizards-in-training!)
http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/2000bestbooks.html#fiction
http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/2000top10best.html
http://www.ala.org/yalsa/awards/winners.html
comics publisher located outside of Tampa, Florida. It is my
responsibility here at CrossGen to get media coverage as well as
find innovative ways to spread the word about our new line of
sci-fi and fantasy based comics.
four monthly titles that are more sci-fi/fantasy based. All take
place in a coherent universe, yet are all separate stories that
can be read individually. Two years worth of planning has gone
into the formation of the stories and background that comprise
the universe. If you are familiar with comic books, I'm sure
you've heard this before, but when I say our comics will be
completely new and different, I'm being truthful. While the
concepts may seem familiar, what's hidden beneath is fresh and
innovative. The comics can be interpreted on many different levels.
The stories are rich with hidden clues hinting at a deeper storyline
that may not be revealed for many years. Unlike other publishers,
we have an outline for the direction of our universe and stories
that runs for at least 10-15 years. There is much detail and depth
to what we've created. We aim to challenge readers with great
storylines and dynamic characters. Many will only pick up on the
outer layer, but many will see the hints we're dropping and pick
up on the inner foundation. Either way, they will be enthralled
and fascinated.
say that these storylines are the best I've ever seen in a comic
book series. And the art being drawn to accompany them: outstanding.
---
so we are happy to refer them to your web page at
http:// www.crossgen.com/ .
attempt to obtain a suprarational cognition of the divine by achieving
a union with it; as such it has a long history in the philosophy of
religion and its foundations (though not, by definition, its results)
can be studied with the same rigor as any other philosophical problem.
understand.
simply as the absence of scientific literacy, although I *will* grant
that a vague hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo misrepresentation of mysticism
is sometimes used as a smokescreen to hide scientific illiteracy.
(Insert nasty crack about Star Trek: Voyager here.)
and I have no trouble understanding what he is saying.
transcendent object for the divine and allowing for union in a
metaphorical sense) but not so generalized as all that. (Though I
probably wouldn't have defined it in just that way).
truth itself is transcendent and that there are alternate ways of
reaching the truth than by science or reason though I have to admit
the public evidence for them is rather poor. So by my use of the
terms I come out a mystic, though by no means an anti-rationalist.
jman@hal-pc.org
ChiCon.
Can't wait!
I'm a-looking. Rate goes up in mid-July, so I've got 'till then to
shop.
... Cryptonomicon was, in its own way, even better!
----
What? Over A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold? - Margaret
address is listed above as jman@hal-pc.org .
to Chicon this year.
and lack of time. Neither is really going to be cured in time for
Chicon. For the same reasons, I won't be voting on the Hugo Awards
this year.
with the shower & the wedding itself. I do have to be at work some
time!
:) -Margaret)
that I've read any of this years entries (that time thing) :-( but
judging on the basis of past performance... Bujold is a better writer
in my book, but the previous entries in the "Deep" set of stories have
been so damn good.
Bujold's Georgette Heyer/Jane Austen book. It's a comedy of manners
about how Miles gets himself engaged. I'm seriously considering
purchasing this book for our permanent collection. Now more than ever
so my fiance Clif can read it!! I really, really treasured it!!)
wouldn't get my vote for Hugo. Though as I say, I haven't read
Cryptonomicon.
BOTH deserve it...I wouldn't know which one to vote for...
----
- Clif
---
list whose writing I am not absolutely crazy about, and then we will
really be in big trouble. :-) - Clif ), from Shari Eggleston who
wanted Margaret to mention UncommonCon in her Con listings and from
Robert "Big Rob" Fontenot who gave us a heads up on ExotiCon (both
are in the listings at http://www.clever.net/cam/concalendar.html )
and from Elaine Hinman-Sweeney who provided last minute information
about Consortium. Even A. T. Campbell, III updated us with new
information about ArmadilloCon.
Bisson story (thanks Matin), from Linda Brevelle telling us about
PayPal, and from Fabio Rosso who wanted to gives us a proposal for
"The Adventure of the Normans", though just what he was proposing
wasn't clear. Patrick Carey let us know that while searching for
his story he found our web page with his request for information
about the story he is looking for. Circularity Rules! Marianne Dyson
pointed the Huntsville Science Fiction & Seeds of Discovery people in
our direction (thanks Marianne).
Clifton B. Davis, Friends of Fandom Info-Alert Staff
http://www.clever.net/cam/fof.html fof@www.clever.net
*************************************************************
The Friends of Fandom Information Alert is an official publication of
Friends of Fandom, distributed in electronic and print form in
furtherance of its tax exempt purpose. The information contained
therein reflects that believed to be true and accurate by its editors.
However, we make no guarantees. All opinions expressed are those of the
individual contributors and may not necessarily reflect either the
official position of Friends of Fandom or the opinions of the editors,
nor the officers or board of directors of Friends of Fandom. Friends of
Fandom is a nonprofit, literary, scientific, and educational 501(c)(3)
corporation committed to encouraging and facilitating interest and
activities pertaining to science fiction, fantasy, and science fact in
its various forms. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of
the precipitate.
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----------------------------
